Charles Griffes

Charles Griffes, in full Charles Tomlinson Griffes, (born Sept. 17, 1884, Elmira, N.Y., U.S.—died April 8, 1920, New York City), first native U.S. composer to write Impressionist music.

Intending to become a concert pianist, Griffes went to Berlin in 1903 to study piano and composition, but his teacher, Engelbert Humperdinck, turned his main interest toward composition. In 1907 he returned to the United States and took a job as a music teacher at the Hackley School for Boys at Tarrytown, N.Y. He died at 35, on the threshold of his artistic maturity.

Griffes was fascinated by Impressionist music and carefully studied the scores of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Other influences were the works of Aleksandr Scriabin and Modest Mussorgsky. The singer Eva Gauthier, for whom he composed several songs, introduced him to Oriental music, which impressed him deeply. His masterpieces are The White Peacock (1915, part of the piano suite Four Roman Sketches), which he orchestrated in 1919 for a ballet sequence; The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (1919, after the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge); and the Poem for flute and orchestra (1918), written for Georges Barrère. Griffes’ other works include the dance dramas Sho-Jo (1917), built on Japanese melodies; The Kairn of Koridwen (1917), for piano, celesta, flute, clarinets, horns, and harp; and the powerful Piano Sonata in F Major. In his music he gradually integrated Impressionist, Oriental, and Russian influences into a personal and original idiom.